Will Microsoft's "Me Too" Wearable Strategy Work

 

Exploded view of the Microsoft Band

With huge anticipation for the coming Apple Watch, developers are working night and day on innovating the latest and greatest fitness, health and medical apps using the Health Kit and the Apple Watch SDK.

Google is attempting the same with the Android version of "Google Fit" and the Android Wear SDK.

Now Microsoft is launching their attack on the, yet to be defined, wearables market with its' "Microsoft Band". 

The Microsoft Band

The Microsoft Band will work on both IOS, Android and Windows Phone, but with Windows you will be able to use the Microsoft voice assistant "Cortana" (but not Apple's Siri).

Like Apple's Health Kit, Microsoft is also launching it's version of personal health data in the cloud with "Microsoft Health". This will be a device agnostic cloud service i.e. it will work with most wearable devices on the market.

Question remains, will the "Microsoft Band" be able to compete with the Apple Watch or will it become another "Zune player" or Surface tablet write-off for Microsoft? (Microsoft wrote off $900 mio due to unsold Surface tablet inventories last year).

Different design options of the Apple Watch